10 Ways Technology Can Save People From Storms

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El Nino is anything but child's play when it comes to affecting the globe's weather. Learn all about El Nino at HowStuffWorks.

Author's Note: 10 Ways Technology Can Save People from Storms

I've always found powerful storms to be extremely frightening, ever since I was a five-year-old on a Sunday drive with my parents, and we heard a tornado warning on the radio that described how the cyclone would resemble an elephant's trunk. All that day, I sat in the backseat and peered through the windows, watching for that scary shape in the sky. Many years later, I had to travel to the Florida panhandle to report on the aftermath of a powerful hurricane, and I was astonished to see the bizarre destructive effects of such a storm -- a half-demolished house, for example, where the Venetian blinds in the windows of one of the surviving walls were twisted into strange DNA-like double helixes. Having talked to people about the terror of riding out such a storm, I'm glad to see that technology may help reduce the carnage from future weather catastrophes.